


you are a guest here now

by TheJGatsby



Series: potentially lovely perpetually human [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M, Some angst, a little fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you,” he says, sounding small and lost and utterly broken.<br/>“I know,” she replies, finally, unwilling to lie to him.<br/>(Or, Kylo Ren in prison)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are a guest here now

**Author's Note:**

> this has been sitting in my drafts box giving me trouble for like a month so thank GOD I'm finally finishing it omg
> 
> Title from How by Regina Spektor

 

They put him in solitary confinement, quietly, away from the other prisoners, with a very short list of people who are allowed to see or know about him. He stays quiet, complacent, his calm in place and his temper in check the way they so rarely are. Rey goes to his cell the day after they land, finds him sitting in the corner, staring blankly at the ceiling. She sits across from him, looking a little bit lost, so he saves her the pain of speaking first.

“Would you believe,” he says, carefully, “after all this time, I  _ still _ don’t know your name? I’ve just been calling you ‘the scavenger’ or ‘the girl’ or ‘her’ in my head.”

“Rey,” she says, after a moment. “My name is Rey.”

“Rey,” he murmurs to himself, carefully, delicately, as if it were something fine and precious. It is, to him, everything about her is. He’s idealizing her, and he knows he shouldn’t, but it’s hard not to. It’ll be easier if he gets to spend more time with her, learn the shape of the person underneath all that blinding light. He really, really hopes he gets the chance to.

“I never did thank you,” says Rey, cautious, a wary olive branch. “For saving us.” He looks over at her and she keeps talking, almost nervous. “And I’m sorry for… the way Poe and Finn treated you-”

“No,” he says. “Don’t… don’t apologize for them. They’re right to hate me.”

“Kylo….” She looks at him with something bordering on pity and he bristles.

“Stop that,” he snaps. “Stop treating me like I’m nobler than I am. I came to the light for selfish reasons, don’t you understand that? I came to the light because the dark side couldn’t give me what I wanted.” He glares at the wall, his insides twisting with self-hatred. It’s comforting in its familiarity.

“What was it you wanted so badly you abandoned everything you’d spent your life working for?” Rey asks softly.

“You know the answer to that.” It feels ridiculous. Pathetic and sentimental and melodramatic and somehow more honest than anything he’s done in years. She showed him the light and he followed it. It’s almost too simple, too easy, a betrayal of everything he spent his life doing, but… it’s the truth. The light called and called, and he just gave up on ignoring it.

She’s silent for a long moment. “I was there,” she says, finally, “in the dreams. With Han and… with me. I mean it wasn’t me, talking to you, it was- I was just watching. Through your eyes.”

“That’s embarrassing,” he replies, dry. “I was very dramatic.”

“Did you really want me to kill you?”

He shrugs. “I figured you would be the most willing. After General Hux. He hated me.”

“You are kind of abrasive,” she replies. “According to Finn you were rather difficult to work with.” He bites back a smile.

“Well I’m sure employee satisfaction has gone through the roof since I left.” She giggles, and his heart tries to flutter out of his chest and chase the sound. He loves it. He wants to hear it a million more times.

“Who would have thought the great and fearsome Kylo Ren was funny?” she says, smiling over at him.

“Not much time for jokes in the tyranny and evil business.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest and sighs, looking over at him. “What happened to you, Kylo?”

“I was captured by the Resistance,” he responds quickly, the slightest flash of a smirk across his face for a second.

Rey scowls and kicks him. “I meant before.”

“My mother can tell you better than I can,” he sighs, leaning his head back against the wall. “It’s all been part of me so long I’m still not sure where I end and what Snoke did to me begins.”

They sit in silence for a while. “You’re on our side, though, right? You’re not… this isn’t some sort of long con?”

“I’m on your side,” he confirms. His eyes flick over to her. “I don’t…  I’m not sure what’s going to happen now that everything is… falling apart, where we go from here, but I trust your judgment, Rey. Wherever you stand, I stand with you.”

It’s a lot, he knows, and she mostly just stares at him for a second before making some half-baked excuse about fighter maintenance and practically fleeing the room.

 

The next person to visit him in his cell is Poe Dameron. When he walks in, Kylo doesn’t move from where he’s sprawled out on the prison cot. Poe stands across from him, arms crossed and face closed off, and Kylo doesn’t look at him.

“Do you remember,” Poe says, finally, his voice soft, “when we were kids, that time you tried to use the Force to cheat at moopsball?”

“I never cheated, I just beat you and you decided I had to have cheated,” Kylo shoots back, sitting up to glare at his old friend.

“No I’m talking about the time you knocked it into the house and broke my mother’s vors-glass model of the-”

“Star palace on Iego,” Kylo says along with him, grinning and wincing a little at the memory. “Stars, yes, I thought she was never going to stop yelling at us. I didn’t even  _ know _ there were that many curses, I was practically writing my will on the spot.”

They’re both laughing, and some of the heaviness lifts from the air. “She thought it was my fault,” Poe says. “Even when you told her it wasn’t and kept insisting it was you, she still thought you were just trying to keep me out of trouble.”

“I have no idea why she’d think that, it’s not as if you were  _ always _ the one getting us into trouble.”

Poe shakes his head with the ghost of a smile. “You were such a good kid. What happened to you?” he asks his old friend.

“People keep asking me that,” says Kylo. He can’t quite look Poe in the eye. “I really missed you, when I went away to Luke’s.”

“Yeah,” Poe says. “Yeah, me too.”

It’s not much, it’s not nearly enough, but it’s something, and it feels like a weight lifted off of Kylo, like he can breathe a little easier as they keep talking- reminiscing, mostly, ignoring the menagerie of banthas in the room, acting as if they’re just two friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time instead of… all they are. Poe leaves, a while later, and Kylo spends a lot of time staring at the ceiling and thinking about what could have been.

 

Rey is his most frequent visitor. She keeps him updated on the debates going on between the powers that be, everyone who wants him executed immediately and those who would rather give him a fair trial, which way the decision seems to be leaning. No one has come to any sort of conclusion yet, so he stays here, alone, staring at walls and counting down the hours till she comes again and sits next to him and reminds him that life exists outside of these walls.

“Can I ask you something, Rey?” he says one day, hesitant, serious, staring at his hands. Her joking reply dies on her tongue and she nods. “How long were you on Jakku?”

“Fourteen years,” she replies, and it’s not a big deal to her, it’s just a fact, the way her life was, but she sees him freeze up at it, his eyes going wide.

“Fourteen years,” he breathes, and he finally looks up at her, somewhere between awestruck and heartbroken. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she replies, breezy, though it’s a little bit hard to be blase with him looking at her like that. “You’re not the one who dropped me there.”

“No one should have to live like that.”

“How do you know anything about how I lived?” she asks, and it’s meant to be half a joke, but he goes red and slouches a little bit in embarrassment.

“I went to your- to where you lived. When I was running. I’m sorry, I am, it just- it was after Tatooine, the second time, and I was curious.” He ducks his head, face flaming. “I wanted- I  _ want _ to know you.”

Any indignation she’d felt at the intrusion fizzles out. He’s- sweet, in his odd way, doing his best with what he knows, and it makes her heart flutter a little bit. He tends to do that, with his breathless wonder and amazed curiosity, like he can never quite believe she’s real. She nudges his arm with her own. “Then ask me,” she says, grinning at him. “Whatever you want to know. Within reason, of course.”

“Everything,” he says, immediately, looking over at her. “I want to know everything.”

Rey almost wants to laugh, but she settles for just smiling at the ground. “There’s not a lot to tell,” she says with a shrug. He snorts, and she elbows him. “I was a scavenger for three-quarters of my life, not much there in the way of intrigue.”

“You had a doll,” he says. “You made it?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Rey frowns, shrugs again. “I don’t know. I was lonely. I wanted… something useless. That was everything, on Jakku. Usefulness. If it wasn’t useful, why bother? It couldn’t put food in your belly, it couldn’t keep a roof over your head or the sun out of your eyes, so what was the point? But there’s… life isn’t just about  _ surviving _ , is it? There’s more to it, there’s-  beauty, and comfort, and hope, and maybe they’re not useful but they matter.” He’s looking at her like that, again, like she’s some sort of enigmatic miracle, and she shifts almost uncomfortably under his gaze. “Do you still draw?” she asks, blurting it out suddenly just to get his focus off her.

“What?” He blinks, bewildered. “Draw?”

“I found your… in the Falcon, the box. With the toys and the datapad in it.” His eyes go wide, and then he looks angry for a moment, but it leaves him quickly.

“I suppose that’s my fault for leaving it behind, isn’t it?” He casts her a rueful glance. “You watched the videos, too, I’m sure.”

“I did. Poe never mentioned….”

“Poe thought I was dead.”

“The voice, the nightmares….”

“Snoke.” Rey nods, chewing on her lip. “I don’t, by the way. Draw. Anymore.”

“You should, you were getting good at it. They started to look like people instead of just, you know, blobs.”

“Maybe they were supposed to be blobs,” he shoots back. “Maybe it was abstract.” She gives him a look and he ducks his head laughing. “Okay, yeah, blobs.”

“You and Poe, though,” she says. “That seems like….”

“Our parents’ worst nightmare?” Kylo snorts. “We were hellions. Mostly him. He was remorseless.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“How many times has he turned that charming smile on you to try to get you to do something you didn’t want to?” Rey grimaces, and he hums in satisfaction. “I rest my case. Poe Dameron is a menace.”

 

She’s not really planning it, the day she leans over and kisses him. It’s an impulse and she follows it, and when he doesn’t react for a long moment, she starts to feel the barest tendrils of regret, but then one hand winds into her hair, the other coming up vicelike around her waist, pulling her into his lap, and he’s kissing her back with a starving, wild ferocity that makes her head spin.

After a fleeting eternity they part and she’s looking down on him, and he’s trembling, and she’s not sure where her feelings end and his begin because they’re all roiling around them in a storm of yearning and terror and adoration and helpless desire. She knows with certainty that the fear is his this time, that she has all the control. It’s a surrender far deeper than the one that put him in this cell, and she’s not sure if it’s hers or his or both of theirs, but she can feel with her thrumming pulse the undeniable knowledge that, in this moment, in every moment from now on and even before, he’s  _ hers _ , completely, hers for the taking, whatever she wants of him. Kylo doesn’t know how to do anything in moderation, so loving her means giving himself to her however she’ll have him, expecting nothing in return.

It’s  _ intoxicating _ , the power she has over him. She’s never felt anything like it- never been  _ wanted _ like this, with the sort of ravenous intensity he’s directing straight at her. Years and years alone in the desert sometimes made her feel as if she’d spend her whole life having no importance to anyone but herself, and having people like Finn and Poe and Luke and the Resistance made that sort of lonesome despair a distant memory, but this? This is something new and incredible all its own, a heady sort of sensation that feels a lot like sin.

But he’s so  _ willing _ , laid bare before her, torn open and vulnerable, offering himself up in desperate, worshipful awe of her. She’s not sure when or how or why but when she wasn’t looking, in all the time that they were away from her, she became the force at the eye of the hurricane that he is. He’s changed, but he’s still the same- raw and intense and singleminded, but his focus has shifted, and it’s all on her now. She holds the enormity of all he is in the palm of her hand and she feels the universe thundering through her veins. She can take whatever she wants, and he knows it, and he fears it, and he revels in it.

Even more than all that, though, is the way he looks at her, all hope and longing and trepidation, suffused with a softness she wouldn’t have thought he was capable of, and it steals her breath and sends her scrambling off his lap because it’s so human, and she’s disgusted with herself for not realizing before now that underneath the fire and brimstone of Kylo Ren was a  _ person _ . She had thought that protecting him and being kind to him and having faith in him would bring his humanity back, but she hadn’t realized that it was already there, still deep within him, scarred and horrified and in agony, the unrelenting source of the conflict between the man he was supposed to be and the monster he was trying to become. Rey only ever saw the monster. Until now, that was what he wanted her to see.

But the monster’s banished and the Kylo in front of her is all man, and without the layers of hardness and anger and hate to hide it, he’s just… sad. Hurt. Guilty. And it’s his own fault, all of it, every wound on his aching heart was etched there by his own hand, but she isn’t in the habit of leaving him to bleed. So she moves forward and wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses his cheek and says, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I love you,” he says, sounding small and lost and utterly broken. It twists like a knife in her chest, because he’s trying so  _ hard _ to remember how to be all the things he beat and burned and cut out of himself years ago, and she’s not sure she ever wants to know when he started believing that he had to destroy himself in order to achieve something he’d never truly be capable of, but she’s filled with furious, wordless grief for the man he could have been, for all the little suicides he committed in pursuit of the impossible, and the piecemeal man in her arms who thinks that he can never make something of his shattered self that will be whole enough for anyone, but offers himself up to her anyway. It’s hopeful in a way that makes her want to laugh and cry all at once, and she wants so much more for him than the world deigned to give.

She presses her face into the crook of his neck, twisting a lock of his hair between her fingers, filled with something she can’t quite name that settles between sadness and tenderness and hope. “I know,” she replies, finally, unwilling to lie to him, not wanting to hurt him but knowing that she doesn’t return the feeling. It feels inadequate, yet he sighs and rests his cheek against her hair like it’s more than enough, and she doesn’t know what worse thing he expected that he seems grateful for the precious little she gave him, but it breaks her heart all the same.

 

Rey doesn’t visit him for a few days, too ashamed and confused and unwilling to confront what she did and how it felt and- all of it. Leia does, and when she sees Rey afterwards she gives her a studying look that leaves the younger girl feeling as if she’s somehow been caught in a lie- though what that is, she isn’t sure. Poe also goes to see Kylo while Rey’s avoiding him, and he wastes no time in hunting her down with a glint in his eye that’s somehow worried and mischievous and bewildered all at once.

“What did you  _ do  _ to him?” Poe asks. “I’ve never seen him like this, which isn’t saying much, but he’s still  _ Ben _ and this is just- weird.”

Rey feels her face go bright red and she closes her eyes tight. “I kissed him,” she says, rushed and embarrassed like Poe might hit her, but when she cracks one eyelid to check his reaction, he looks wickedly gleeful, all the boyish best friend, like he can’t wait to go and give Kylo hell about this. “Shut up,” she mutters darkly, smacking him on the chest.

“You should really go talk to him,” Poe says, “he thinks you’re avoiding him. He’s all kinds of wrecked about it.” Rey feels the sharp roll of guilt in her gut but she doesn’t know what to  _ do _ , how to be around him now.

“I can’t… I don’t know if I can….”

“Hey,” Poe says, a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You’re  _ Rey _ , okay? You can handle anything.”

“Not this,” she practically whines. “It’s… I’ve never… on Jakku, there isn’t-”

“You’ve never had a crush before,” Poe says, realization dawning.

“I have, too! It just- Finn was different, okay? He-”

“You  _ barely _ had a crush on Finn,” Poe snorts. “Trust me, I was there, that was- puppy love, at best, you stepped off the second you found out I was into him.”

“What, are you unhappy about that? Do you want me to flirt with Finn?”

“No! But- this is a  _ real _ crush, okay? This, the nervousness and the embarrassment and the fluttery feelings?  _ That _ is a crush.”

“I think I might have really hurt him,” she says quietly. “He seemed… I don’t know, I don’t have the word for it, but….”

“Rey, listen. The only thing hurting him is the fact that you haven’t talked to him in days. You don’t have to go see him if you don’t want to- it’s up to you, everything is always up to you, okay? You have no obligation to him or anyone else, you’re your own person. But I do think you should talk to him, because you care about him, and you’re clearly important to him, and honestly? I think you’re good for him. I think having you around helps him. So… in my opinion, you should, but you don’t have to, okay? It’s up to you.” He pinches her cheek fondly, flashes her his charming smile and retreats back to whatever he’s meant to be doing. “See you around, sunshine!”

 

It’s been days since Kylo last saw her, and fear has grown from an insidious seed in his heart to a stone sitting heavy in his gut. Rejection, abandonment, regret- they all run circles in his mind, treading paths like scars through his thoughts. He tries to keep it together in front of his mother and Poe when he sees them, but intimidation wasn’t the only reason he wore a mask, and he knows it’s clear on his face that he’s worried about something.

And then it’s the middle of the night, and a disturbance in the Force jolts him awake, and he can feel her anxious energy vibrating through the air as if it were oxygen. So he’s… somewhat prepared when she stumbles through the door into his cell. He barely has time to stand before she’s across the room, her hands on his arms, looking him up and down as if she expects him to be injured.

“Rey, I’m fine,” he says, low and reassuring, or as much as he can manage, and then she finally looks at his face and her expression melts into something frightened and overwhelmed before she falls forward, burying her face in his chest. His arms come up around her, holding her against him, half holding her up, and he presses his nose into her hair. She’s shaking almost imperceptibly, and he rubs comforting circles into her back. “It’s okay, Rey, it was just a dream.”

“I know,” she says, muffled by his skin, and he realizes two minutes too late that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says again. “Don’t be sorry.” Eventually, she manages to calm down, and she pulls away from him, but keeps her hands on his shoulders, so he doesn’t drop his arms from around her.

“I am sorry, though,” she says. “For avoiding you.”

He gives her a tiny smile. “You came back, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she says, looking away. “I came back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


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